Bernie Madeoff & Employee Free Choice Act

[sauronsfinger]

Rachel Maddow, radio and TV host, played an audio recording Friday night of convicted felon Bernie Madeoff railing against the Employee Free Choice Act that is now before Congress. To say Madeoff expressed hatred and loathing for the Act is probably an understatement. The recording came from a conference call that was sponsored by Bank of America some months back before Madeoff ever hit the news for his crimes.

I was hoping the recording would be up on her website but that looks like it is at least three days behind her air dates. I will link to it when it becomes available. But the recording is pretty straight forward - Madeoff talking very forcefully about how everyone should fight to defeat this bill.


If there is a more hated man in America than Bernie Madeoff right now, I would be hard pressed to name him. So here is my question. Let us say you are the director of a firm whose job it has become to whip up public support FOR the Employee Free Choice Act bill. Do you use this recording of Madeoff complete with his name attached for obvious purposes?

Hundreds of millions of dollars are going to spent by both sides in this campaign to pass/defeat the bill. There will be no shortage of money for these purposes.

Now I am sure the easy thing to do is to take the moral high road and say something like "if all one wants to do is win and is willing to do anything to do so regardless of the ethics involved, then yes, use it". But to move discussion along, let us assume that if you are in the business of political advertising campaigns, purity and ethics are not your top priority. Lets please look more at pragmatics.

My question is one of pure hard-edged reality. If you were in charge of advertising to help pass the Employee Free Choice Act do you make as part of your campaign the recording of Bernie Madeoff railing against it?
What is the up side... what is the down side?

And if used, would it be effective?